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Miniaturizing Your Arduino Project using ATtiny85

I am currently creating an “Arc Reactor” similar to that of Tony Stark’s. And I initially created a prototype using my DIY Arduino-compatible on breadboard. Then I decided to use an Arduino-compatible Arduino Nano V3. Refer to the images below:

Through some researches I did online on how to minimize components use, I stumbled with using an ATtiny85 chip to be used in the project. And through some more researching, I decided to have the “Arc Reactor” project done using the ATtiny85 Development Board, picture below:

I bought these boards from DJ Elektronix (transaction was fast, and the items were delivered cia GrabExpress if you want them at your doorstep ASAP). I then began soldering the male headers which came with each board:

Now that the male header pins were soldered, let’s study first the pinout of the ATtiny85, and relate this to the ATtiny85 Development Board. The image below shows the pinout of the integrated circuit itself:

The notch at the top of the chip indicates where pin 1 is, then the count continues consecutively counter-clockwise. Now, let’s look at the ATtiny85 Development Board, and let’s see where the ATtiny85 pins are in this board:

At the ATtiny85 IC diagram, we see the following pims labeled with PB0, PB1, PB2, PB3, PB4, and PB5. These pins correspond to P0, P1, P2, P3, P4, and P5 from the Development Board. You will also see 5V, GND and VIN pins. These correspond to the output 5V from the board, the Ground (Pin 4 of the IC), and Input Voltage (Pin 8 of the IC). The board also has a micro USB to power it.

CONNECTING THE WIRES (ARDUINO UNO to ATTINY85 BOARD)

Let’s connect the necessary pins together on both boards. You need the following ready beforehand:

1 x Arduino UNO (or any Arduino board will do)1 x ATtiny85 Development Board6 x Jumper Wires(Note: In my case, I used 8: 4 male to male and 4 male to female. I decided to extend the female to male jumper wires for the power supply to ATtiny board. If you have a longer male to male jumper wires, you only need 6 all in all)

Let’s take a look how the pin connections are made:

We need to connect the MOSI, MISO and SCK pins of both boards together (refer to the IC pinout), and Digital Pin 10 of the Arduino UNO to P5 of the ATtiny85 Development Board.

The sketch should be uploading to your ATtiny85 Development Board at this stage.

NOTE: Programmer should be Arduino as ISP, and NOT ArduinoISP!

In my case, I created my simple “Arc Reactor” controlled by the ATtiny85 Development Board. The “Arc Reactor” consists of two WS2812 RGB LED rings (8 and 16 bits). The first photo in this article shows the “Arc Reactor” begin controlled by the Arduino-compatible Arduino Nano V3. Since I need to use as little as components as possible, for for this matter as small component as possible (since I do not need the whole capability of Arduino Nano V3), I used the ATtin85 Development Board to power my “Arc Reactor”: